


The Funeral

by LittleGemstone



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, I mean it's a statement, Wakes & Funerals, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 23:10:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20750312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleGemstone/pseuds/LittleGemstone
Summary: The statement of Katherine Layall regarding the funeral of Annie Barthes.(fan statement, kind of more sad than scary, whoops)





	The Funeral

**Author's Note:**

> I basically just did this as a writing exercise.  
There isn't any body horror or anything, really it's much tamer than canon. I'll probably do a companion piece at some point that leans more into the body horror/existential nightmare stuff.  
It apparently made one of my friends cry when she read it, but she cries a lot so take that with a pinch of salt lmao.  
Please don't pay too much attention to the dates, they don't really mean anything and I didn't check them against canon so uh sorry if I accidentally set this like........in the middle of Prentiss or something

Recording begins.

Statement of Katherine Layell regarding the funeral of Annie Barthes. Original statement given 3rd of December 2016, statement committed to tape 17th of January 2017.

Statement begins.

I attended the funeral of Annie Barthes. You have to understand, I didn't really _ know _ Annie, not really, hell the invitation to the funeral was how I found out her surname, she was just a customer at the cafe where I worked -The China Teacup, at the top of the highstreet- but she was one of the ones you talked to whenever you could. It wasn't that she was one of those customers who are so bizarre that you find yourself taking every opportunity to talk to them, and it certainly wasn't anything romantic, she just seemed like she needed the company. She'd always just look that bit happier if you were able to ask her how her day was or comment on a new film or anything. It was simple enough, and it felt like I was doing my part whenever the place was clear enough that I could chat with her for five minutes. It feels silly to say now given the turnout of her funeral, but I'd never seen her with anyone else, and she never seemed to be texting if she was on her phone, so it sometimes felt like I was the only person she ever talked to. Even at the time, I knew it was a stupid thought, but something about the way she lit up if you said her name just seemed so desperately lonely.

Anyway.

One day she just stopped showing up at the Teacup, sometime in July. It wasn't immediately notable, her visits never really followed a pattern beyond always being during my shifts, but after a week I was pretty sure she wasn't coming back...I didn't really think much of it at the time. We'd talked, sure, but she was barely an acquaintance, and I presumed she'd simply moved or found a better cafe or something, so I just kind of forgot about her in that way you forget about your regulars. If she'd shown up again, I'd maybe have had a brief second before I recognised her, but it wasn't like I was sitting frantically waiting for news.

A week or so after I noticed her disappearance, the invitation to her funeral arrived. It was a letter, plain paper with just the bare details: the location, time, and date of the funeral, and of course who it was for. There were no embellishments, which I thought was quite odd as I almost expected a funeral invite to look somewhat like a wedding invite. I gave it to you guys with my forms. I will admit that at first I assumed the invite had been sent to the wrong person. As I said before, I'd only known Annie Barthes as Annie, given that surnames don't exactly come up in the casual conversation between a barista and a customer, and I didn't know any other Annies. There was no return address included, so I spent a few minutes trying to decide what to do. Eventually I settled on looking up Annie Barthes on Facebook. That would at least let me find someone to contact about the invite that I thought had been missent.

Her profile was. Weird. It was perfectly normal at first, a selfie for a profile picture -allowing me to realise that I did in fact know her- and a few personal details: age, one of the schools she'd attended, a post consisting of a photo of some succulents with a caption saying something about a new addition to her collection. But she had no friends. Not one.

In some small way it was almost satisfying -my feeling that I was her only social interaction appeared accurate, or at least likely- but mostly it was just sad. And it was unsettling. Who doesn't even have one friend? 

And if she had no friends, and to my knowledge no family, who had sent me the invite? And how had they known to do so?

I pretty quickly resolved to attend the funeral.

At the very least to pay my respects, but I'll admit I was curious. I had this strange image in my head, during those days leading up to it, that I'd be the only one there. That the priest, or whoever had been hired to lead the ceremony, would be faced with only one attendant and I would end up reading a eulogy to an empty room. It was foolish, of course. I reasoned that there would at least be one other person in attendance as whoever invited me would surely show up. But the scene stuck with me, and after a couple of days I did write a brief eulogy. Just in case.

The day eventually came. It was that weird thing where it felt like no time at all had passed but also like you'd been waiting forever. I think it was actually something like two weeks from invitation to event. I feel like I should remember the exact date, but I never really bothered committing it to memory. It was early August 2016 though, maybe the 11th? I can't remember. It's on the invite.

Anyway.

I drove there, though it was a short drive, the nearest funeral services are just on the edge of town. I was faintly surprised to see a lot of other people there when I arrived. It made me feel more out of place at first. I assumed they were family and friends -people who'd known Annie, actually known Annie- and there I was barely even knowing her name. 

But no one was really talking to each other. 

There were the occasional couple making what looked to be awkward small talk, but none of the little clusters of people I'd expected. But then, I'd never been to a funeral before, so for all I knew this was just normal behaviour and movies and suchlike had just lied to me. Eventually I mustered up the courage to talk to someone, a kindly old lady who told me her name was Jane Dougherty. I asked how she knew the deceased and she looked embarrassed. Said that she didn't, really, that she worked as a librarian and Annie was a regular that she exchanged conversation with. Said she'd got the impression Annie was lonely, though she meant no offence by that of course. I think that she'd assumed I was friends with Annie and I couldn't blame her. I'd assumed she was a grandparent or other elderly relative. When she asked me the same, I told her much the same as I've told you: Annie was a regular at the café I worked in and we talked whenever the opportunity arose. We made small talk for a little longer before I excused myself.

It was a little odd, but I could have written it off as coincidence that we were both barely acquaintances of Annie's, if I hadn't decided to talk to some of the other attendants.

Every single person there had a similar story.

Annie was someone they passed everyday when walking to work, or shared their yoga class, or sat near them sometimes when they went to watch the cricket at the club just out of town. Some of them hadn't even known she was called Annie until they received the invite to her funeral. 

All of us had got that impression, that Annie was very _ very _ lonely.

I know that some of them told me their names, but I've never really had a good memory for names, and I only remember Jane's, sorry.

Whoever had invited us never showed up.

The service was short. The priest didn't say much, and only a few of us had prepared eulogies, and we barely had anything to say anyway. There was a sort of...comfort in knowing that everyone else here knew Annie about as well as I did. It feels awful to say, the girl was dead and there I was, relieved that no one at her funeral actually knew her. But at least I wasn't reading out a few lines about a near-stranger who I'd talked to maybe once or twice a week to her family.

The coffin was taken out to the grave and lowered into it. It looked so final, lying there. And I had this sudden thought that she couldn't be buried yet, that her mother or sister or closest friend or _ someone _ was on their way, was so _ close _ . There was a wash of...fear? Desperation? I'm not quite sure, but I _ couldn't _let them bury it. I couldn't let Annie Barthes be buried with only us watching. I...I just shouted. Shouted "WAIT!" Everyone turned to look at me of course, but I could have sworn they looked relieved. As if they'd all been wanting to stop it but just hadn't had the courage to say anything. 

The funeral staff were confused of course, I can't imagine someone halting the burial is exactly common, but they agreed to wait after one of the others -I don't remember who- said we thought there was someone running late.

We waited for hours.

None of us wanted to be the first to say that we thought they weren't coming. The funeral staff were fine with waiting, apparently we were their last booked funeral for the day. About an hour in they started to get a little antsy though. Which was fair enough, looking back I'm surprised that I waited so calmly. Usually I'm a fidgeter, but it seemed that as long as we were waiting, as long as the funeral wasn't over before whoever it was arrived, then everything was fine. None of the other attendants moved either, though the staff did enough fidgeting for us all.

No one did arrive, and eventually the staff told us that the place needed to close for the night and we had to proceed.

It was awful though.

The coffin disappeared under the earth and every shovelful of earth almost physically hurt to watch. Leaving was hard too. It was like something awful would happen if we weren't all here when whoever had called us here finally arrived. 

Gradually everybody left, but I've always been too curious for my own good. I asked the staff if I could stay by the grave, I think I said something about wanting to say goodbye alone, and they were understanding and left me to it. Telling me to let myself out when I was done.

It got dark quickly, and I knew I had to work tomorrow, but I stayed waiting. The desperation had ebbed somewhat, but my curiosity hadn't. It was August, so it wasn’t exactly cold even when the sun set. I’d like to be able to say that despite this a cold wind blew through me, but nothing like that happened. It was just a mild August night and I was standing in a graveyard.

I was the only one there when she arrived.

Annie Barthes walked along the path and stood beside me. She looked exactly how I'd last seen her. If you'd asked me before then what she was wearing the last time I'd seen her, I wouldn't have been able to tell you, but in that moment I knew that she was wearing that exact dress the last time I'd seen her alive.

She barely even acknowledged me, which was strange. Usually she'd greet me with a 'good morning, how are you?' but now she just nodded slightly at me and then just stood, staring at her own grave. She didn't look sad or confused or anything. Just blankly stared.

I didn't know what to do. I definitely couldn't leave now. But I couldn't bring myself to break the silence either. And what would I even say? 'Hi Annie, your funeral was weird, huh?' So we just stood there in silence.

I don't know how long we stood there, but eventually Annie turned to me and said "Thank you." Just like that. Flat and quiet. I turned to face her, but by the time I did, she was gone. Just disappeared into thin air. Or maybe into the new grave.

I waited for a little after that, but it was pretty clear she wasn't going to return and I felt normal again, so I left. I had to climb over the fence, I think the funeral staff forgot I was there or something and had locked the gates, but I drove home and went to sleep without incident.

I thought it was weird, but maybe a mixture of imagination and anxiety or something. I wrote off the funeral as something that probably didn't happen the way I remembered it. It’s funny how the mind does that, isn’t it? Just smoothes over the strange things and tells you ‘no that didn’t happen’ even when it so very clearly did.

But last week, Annie Barthes visited the cafe again. She greeted me like nothing had happened and if she noticed my shock, she didn't show it. My coworker, Shannon Fielding, asked if I was ok so I boxed up the reappearance of Annie Barthes to deal with later and I went back to work. I hadn't told anyone that it was Annie's funeral that I’d gone to, it was kind of weird for me to go to a near-stranger's funeral so I wasn't exactly telling everyone about it, but it meant that no one I knew found it weird that Annie was back.

I haven't had much of a chance to talk to her since she's been back -she's only been in a couple of times this past week and the cafe's always been too busy for me to stop and talk to her properly- but it's definitely the same Annie. 

I've tried to find some of the other people from the funeral, see if they've seen her again too, but I only really remember Jane's name and I couldn't find her on Facebook. Maybe you'll have better luck.

I'm still going to talk to Annie though. I still think she's lonely.

Statement ends.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we were unable to find any records of Annie Barthes aside from the Facebook page and the records of the funeral home that Katherine mentioned. Annie Barthes was buried late in the day on the 9th of August 2016. The funeral was paid for in cash by a woman, but they would not give us any further information. The Facebook page yielded no useful information and was almost entirely empty aside from the post that Katherine mentioned. Tim did manage to find Jane Dougherty, and while she confirms that the funeral happened in the same way that Katherine described, she does not report having seen Annie since. She did also mention the overwhelming need to wait for someone and claimed that it passed when she left the funeral home. She could not identify anyone else from the funeral. Katherine agreed to a follow-up interview and, according to Martin, is remarkably willing to work with us. She appears to be under the impression that giving us a statement and answering our questions is some sort of requirement if you have a supernatural or paranormal encounter. If this belief makes it easier for us to gather information, I have no qualms letting her keep believing it, even if Martin complains that it ‘feels dishonest’. In any case, she reports that Annie has continued to show up at the cafe, and that she's continued to talk to Annie but only ever as acquaintances. She does report a sense of guilt that she isn't trying to properly befriend Annie, but says that it is "nothing like" the feeling from the funeral, so I think we can safely dismiss that part as unrelated. Martin tried on multiple occasions to meet Annie, but either her schedule is as sporadic as Katherine said or Katherine is simply hallucinating because Martin was never able to catch her.

I'd be inclined to dismiss this case, but both Katherine and Jane seem certain that they felt something at that funeral and someone only having acquaintances at their funeral is certainly odd. And we never did find out who sent the invitations. And...well...it only records on tape.

However from what I can tell there does not seem to be any danger posed by Annie Barthes and not enough evidence one way or another to prove what, if anything, she is. We have of course warned Katherine to keep a close eye on Annie's behaviour and be cautious of any possessive tendencies and suchlike. Especially if that guilt gets stronger. She seemed delighted to be involved.

End recording.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually read it aloud to myself and timed it to make sure it was the right length lmao


End file.
